“Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek” , a collaborative installation art project created by 90 practicing artists to memorialize the many species who perished in Dunkard Creek in 2009, will open on Thursday, February 2 in Brooks Gallery of Wallman Hall, with an artist’s reception from 7 to 9 pm, featuring the creator and organizer of the exhibition, Ann Payne, and others. The exhibition will run through the 24th.
The exhibition features ninety artists representing ninety species— including mussels catfish, mudpuppies, shiners, darters, minnows and insects, in a variety of media— who are united by a shared physical connection to the Monongahela Watershed.
The exhibition began in the Arts Monongahela Jackson Kelly Gallery in Morgantown last September and has subsequently been at the California University of Pennsylvania and the University of Charleston, West Virginia. It will continue to travel throughout the Appalachian region for the next two years.
“I felt as though as an artist, I wasn’t able to participate in the conversation about what went wrong in Dunkard Creek,” said Ann Payne, organizer of the exhibit. “I’m not a scientist, and I’m not a politician, and I’m not an energy company representative. But I am a resident who cares deeply about how we as a society treat the natural world.”
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In an event tangentially related to the Dunkard Creek exhibition, there will be a panel discussion sponsored by the Instructor Exchange Committee, “Environmental Awareness Panel Discussion II,” scheduled for February 21, from 5 to 7 p.m., in the Musick Library’s Multimedia A.
The panelists are: Sue Kelly (Department of English), “Ecofeminism;” Marian J Hollinger (Department of Art/Curator, Brooks Gallery), “Art and Nature: Implications of Romanticism?;” James Kotcon (Department of Plant Pathology, West Virginia University), “Botanical Ecology;” and Tadashi Kato (Department of Psychology), “Environmental Psychology and Jungian Archetypes of Nature.” Kato will also moderate the panel.
The gallery will be open for the panel discussion, so that attdendees may view the Dunkard Creek exhibition.
BACKGROUND:
Dunkard Creek meanders along the Mason-Dixon line for over 40 miles, back and forth across the Pennsylvania and West Virginia state lines, before it flows into the Monongahela River, recently listed as one of Americaʼs ten most endangered rivers. The Monongahela River supplies drinking water to 850,000 people. In September 2009, the entire forty-mile length of Dunkard Creek literally died, with some 65,000 water creatures floating dead to the surface or washing onto the banks. The culprit? A Golden Algae bloom, acid mine runoff, low water caused by high volume water withdrawals for fracking operations, and illegal dumping of Marcellus drilling wastewater – all at various times have been strongly implicated (links to articles discussing the causes of the kill-off will be found at the end of this post).
In a lawsuit following the death of the Creek, Consolidated Coal (Consol) was ordered to pay $500,000 to ‘restore’ the creek. Consol also agreed to pay $200 million to upgrade its treatment facilities, in addition to $5.5 million in civil penalties, though Consol has never formally accepted responsibility for the kill-off.
In late spring of 2011, the West Virginia DEP issued permits for two new hydraulic fracturing wells in Pentress, WV on Dunkard Creek. One such well, on average, uses 5.5 million gallons of water. Water for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is typically withdrawn from nearby streams or rivers. Regarding the effect of such withdrawals, Lou Reynolds, the chief EPA biologist on the scientific team which investigated the kill-off wrote: “… Dunkard Creek should be OFF LIMITS for gas companies looking to withdraw millions of gallons used to frack Marcellus wells.”
For more complete information, see the New York Times story by Mike Soraghan of Greenwire, “In Fish-Kill Mystery, EPA Scientist Points at Shale Drilling”
This same article also appeared in the October 12 issue of Scientific American, with the title EPA Scientist Points at Fracking in Fish-Kill Mystery: A mysterious fish-kill in Dunkard Creek may have been the result of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing of shale for natural gas
Previously, the EPA investigation which found no conclusive link between Marcellus gas drilling and the Dunkard Creek fish kill was questioned by professor Dan Volz of the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Volz pointed out that Golden Algae is a coastal salt water algae and noted the highly concentrated salinity of fracking waste. Mine discharge is also salinic, but is it of sufficiently high salinity to affect an entire 40-mile stretch of stream? Dr. Volz’s discussion of this issue can be heard in the episode “Game Changer” of the National Public Radio news series, “This American Life”.
See also the related story, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Sues Consol Energy.
Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission sues CONSOL for contributing to the death of nearly 65,000 fish, mussels and salamanders in Dunkard Creek in September 2009. The Suit takes into account recent suspicions that fracking wastes were involved.
See also the recent national story, which included two paintings from the “Reflections” exhibition, “What Killed Dunkard Creek? Residents in Pennsylvania and West Virginia say fracking is to blame“ by Adam Federman of the Earth Island Journal.
One of the 65,000 or so casualties
